I used to develop databases in Filemaker, an Apple software product – so easy that it was often the Administrative Assistant who created the organization’s database(s). Except for enormous transactional systems, like those handling the ATMs of large banks, Filemaker was a far better choice, for many reasons, than the clumsy, dysfunctional piece of junk called Oracle, for a tiny fraction of the cost. I bring this up because this is one of innumerable examples of the innate corruption of the Imperialist/Capitalist system, where profit predictably trumps common sense, not to mention simple human decency. Oracle, like Microsoft and many others, had only one kind of expertise – Sales and Marketing. They spent billions on paying top programmers to overcome the deficiencies of their initial products. Then they made many more billions after pretty much cornering the market.

In database theory, one starts with a root directory (aka a folder) and follows with a set of sub-directories. It’s a method that was pioneered in the 18th Century by Carl Linnaeus, also known as the “father of modern taxonomy”. The number of items in the lowest level sub-directories can be very large. It’s the content, aka the data.

Our mother website, ‘Situation Report: The World,’ like pretty much everything else in the digital world, is a database, or part of one. The content is the data, in this case a collection of items – writings, images, video and audio that each reflects a view, or views, of whatever the hell is going on in this crazy world, or some take on how we got here or where we’re going. Collectively, they are “A Chronicle of the Decline and Fall of the Western Empire.”

That sub-title is an adequate term but now I’d like to introduce a name for the root directory , “The Overview.” In this first proper blog entry, I’m going to elaborate on that a bit. Think of a good vantage point from which to see the whole field, like the most expensive seats from which to watch professional football. They’re high up and unobstructed. Or the top of a mountain, from where you can see all below. That’s what I mean by overview. Sorry if all this seems too simplistic – I’m just trying to make sure that everybody’s on board.

A couple of years ago I came up with a term to describe an overview of this time in history. I doubt very much that I was the first to do so. Recently, it has suddenly popped up all over the place. A couple of weeks ago, the redoubtable Vladimir Putin himself used it. It is “a geopolitical tectonic shift,” henceforth GpTS. A lovely simile – particularly apt is what’s occurring along the San Andreas Fault. The Eastern plate is encroaching on the Western one. Note that even among today’s crop of opportunistic $cientists, no one claims that there might be a technological solution. The West is sinking and the East is rising – it is an inexorable process.

Everything that has been happening for at least the last 75 years can only be fully understood in that context. Otherwise, how could we even begin to understand the criminal insanity, or the descent into fascism, of the flagship – the USA – or that of the Eurolemmings and the rest of the “rules-based order” crowd, who blindly and obediently follow the batshit crazy Pied Piper.

We can debate the beginning of the era that is now coming to an end. I opt for the sudden maritime explosion of the Europeans about 500 years ago, all around the world, where a sense of cultural, religious and racial superiority, along with the most advanced technology, made it possible for them to colonize most of it. Thus it has been for millennia. The upstart empire gets more and more arrogant and smug, with corruption and factional rivalry bleeding away their power, while those who were overrun start putting themselves back together and forming strong alliances. And so it goes..

In further posts I’m going to drill down to the sub-directories level, covering how that inexorable process, the GpTS, has been manifesting itself as the new multipolar world begins to take shape. In the meantime, stay tuned to the action via SitRepWorld. It’s something else, living in interesting times, ain’t it?..

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